Taken

I woke to the unmistakable sound of jet exhaust rushing nearby. Was I near the airport? Why was I near the airport?

My groggy mind tried to make sense of what was happening and, thankfully, I remained quiet and still while I muddled through my jumbled recent memories.

One: I was in Mexico to visit my sister.

Two: I went into Cabo to meet her at a club.

Three: When I went to the address, there was nothing around but a strange man.

Four: The man grabbed me from behind and I screamed.

Five: The man covered my mouth and nose so that I couldn't breath and I blacked out.

Fuck....

Six: I woke in a strange car near an airport. I was under some sort of cover and with my hands behind my back and they hurt like hell from some kind of restraint. Of course, the rest of me hurt too, but I didn't think that mattered at the moment.

Okay, Alex, time to think. You're in a car, being taken somewhere. You've passed the airport, which assuming it's the same one you came in on this morning, was on the north side of town, though that was, technically, Colonia del Sol, not Cabo proper, so who knows where the fuck you are. Either way, you're probably being taken north somewhere. Given that this bastard responded from Mira's cell phone, they probably have her too and you're being taken to where she is.

So, then came the decision, did I stay a prisoner and hope they take me to Mira and her friends or did I try to get free and call in the cavalry?

Well, given that, presumably, nobody even knows that you've been ****, nor any of the others, it seems like letting them take me to wherever they're holding the others would just be giving them more hostages with no word reaching the authorities.

So, that left the second option, trying to escape.

Okay, Alex, how do you accomplish that?

I'm the the back seat of a car under a blanket or something. That means that the driver can't see me unless I move around while he's looking. That seems good. But, my hands are bound and they're probably going to go numb soon, meaning that they're going to be clumsy, even if I do get them free. Finally, it seems like the only things under this blanket are me, but without my clutch, a roll of duct tape, a pair of leather work gloves, and a bunch of zip ties, which are probably what's holding my hands together. I've heard that those can be broken, but I don't know how to do it.

Not coming up with any great ideas from the assorted junk under the cloth in the back, I decided to use my feet to slide the cloth down a bit and peek out.

The car is old, probably from the early two thousands. The windows are the manual kind.

I slid my toe under the door handle and discovered that it wouldn't budge, despite appearing unlocked.

The kidnapper must have the damned child-safety locks enabled so that I can't open the back doors. That means that my best bet is to go out the front, unless I think that I can kick out a window.

Carefully, I looked into the front seat and saw the same man who attacked me lit up by the dashboard lights. I continued looking around as he seemed pretty focused on the road and the sooner I got the information, the sooner I could act on it.

The car is a manual transmission and he has it down and to the center, which means we must be in fourth gear, so probably fifty to eighty kilometers per hour. Nobody else in the car. No sign of any weapons, but they could simply be out of sight.

This wasn't a whole lot to work with. The way I saw it, I had two possible options, get him to pull over and try to run away, which was pretty dicey at best, or do something to cause him to crash the car, preferably in a way that causes more harm to him than to me, also very dicey.

I played the decision over in my mind while we left the dim glow of town behind us.

My mind was made up when, like some sort of gift from God, the brilliant lights of a semi shown in through the front windshield. Knowing that I would only have one shot at this, I kicked the cover off me, swung my legs up between the front seats and I kicked the gear shift from its position in fourth up and left into first.

This had a few effects, firstly, it caused the engine to let out a screech as it was **** to shift gears without engaging the clutch, secondly, it caused the car to shake and skid as the RPMs shot up and the car tried to rapidly slow down, thirdly, it caused my abductor to shift his grip on the wheel so that he had one hand at the top of the wheel, maybe at twelve or one o'clock, and the other hand off the wheel, trying to adjust the gear shift.

My next course of action was, admittedly, kinda of the roll-the-dice-and-pray-you-survive variety; I slammed my heels into the man's hand that was left on the wheel and spun it to the left as hard as possible before pulling back into the back seat and trying to brace myself for what came next.

Turns out, I wasn't prepared.

The crash was violent and noisy like few other things are. When the truck hit us, it struck right in front of the driver, like I hoped, and it spun us around like a top as we careened off the road. Neither of us being buckled in, we bounced around the interior like pinballs in an arcade machine.

When I next awoke, I lay in a pool of slowly congealing blood. Some depraved part of me decided to stick out my tongue and lap up a mouthful of the blood, seemingly to see if it was mine, because concussed me thought that was possible. And, surprise surprise, it tasted like coppery blood, so I tried again. Yep, still tasted like blood, but I had no idea whose it was until I looked over and saw the man who had **** me, smashed to a degree that I felt confident wasn't survivable. As for myself, I discovered that as bad as the sunburn was, the bone-deep ache of a car accident was worse.

Slowly, I pushed myself onto my side and looked back at where the damaged car sat, no truck in sight, because, apparently, hit-and-run vehicular homicide is just the thing to do on a Saturday night in Cabo. Anyway, somehow my captor and I had both been thrown out onto the shoulder of the road. And, after my vision had steadied and I got a good look at the scene, I decided it must have been through the rear window, which was completely missing.

"Fuck me," I cursed.

With a sigh, I stood up and realized that my hands had come free, but there was a wicked, stinging bruise around my wrists and my ankle was rapidly swelling to softball proportions.